The workshops on innovative financing of nature continue with three sessions in Barcelona between October and December
The Global Nature Foundation, within the framework of the LIFE STEWARDSHIP project, continues its series of workshops dedicated to innovative financing for ecosystem conservation and restoration, especially focused on land stewardship initiatives. Following the sessions held this year, three new workshops will take place in Barcelona between October and December, in collaboration with the Xarxa per a la Conservació de la Natura (XCN), also a partner in the LIFE STEWARDSHIP project.
As in previous sessions, the objective is to bring together stewardship entities, landowners, companies, and government agencies to create synergies and alliances that can lead to stewardship initiatives.
Three workshops in Barcelona
On October 15th, a workshop on biodiversity metrics will be held for large landowners and companies, addressing how to turn biodiversity into a financing opportunity.
On November 12th, a session on carbon credits will be held for stewardship organizations and interested experts, focusing on methodologies for promoting stewardship initiatives through carbon credits.
The final workshop of the year will take place on December 3rd, on tourism, conservation, and investment in the land, and aimed at tourism businesses and government agencies.
Upcoming workshops in 2027
The next sessions in this series on innovative nature-based financing will continue in 2027, with further workshops in Seville, Cuenca, and Madrid on water footprint, compensatory measures, and other innovative financing mechanisms. This will complete a comprehensive overview of nearly all sectors and financial instruments linked to nature restoration and conservation and suitable for land stewardship.
Why land stewardship needs innovative financing
Under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, countries have agreed to mobilize $200 billion annually until 2030 from public and private sources. Given the inadequacy of public funding, it is essential to involve the private sector through innovative financial instruments. This is the objective of the series of workshops promoted by LIFE STEWARDSHIP: to provide expertise on this set of instruments so that different entities, companies, and landowners can generate measurable and replicable pilot projects that demonstrate the model’s effectiveness and scalability.
In Spain, most of the land is privately owned: 40% is farmland that sustains more than 50% of the country’s biodiversity, 30% is key pastureland for species and habitats, and more than 70% of forests are privately held. Without the involvement of these landowners, conservation is not possible. Land stewardship is the tool that enables this collaboration: Spain already has 708,191 hectares under 4,632 agreements and 268 stewardship entities, according to the 7th Inventory of the Biodiversity Foundation (MITECO). This potential continues to grow, and its current limit is the available funding.
LIFE STEWARDSHIP
The overall aim of the LIFE Stewardship project is to use land stewardship-based approaches to boost collaboration involving public and private entities as well as civil society for nature conservation and restoration in Spain, in the framework of the Europe Biodiversity Strategy 2030 and international agreements.
The project is coordinated by the Biodiversity Foundation of the Spanish Ministry of Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, with the participation of Eurosite, the Forum of Land Stewardship Networks and Entities (FRECT), Global Nature Foundation (FGN), Fernando González Bernáldez/ Europarc-Spain Foundation, SEO/BirdLife and Nature Conservation Network (XCN) as partners. It has the financial contribution of the LIFE Programme of the European Union.